Crowdfunded space sim Star Citizen will be one of the industry's biggest triple-A developments, according to creator Chris Roberts.

With the game now close to $50m in backing, Roberts reckons his title will lag behind only Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto when it comes to raw dollar investment.

“Normally developers ‘sell out’ to a console platform (Bungie or Epic going Xbox exclusive for instance) because the platform holder is funding the budget,” he said in a blog post.

“Thanks to everyone that has backed Star Citizen we have no need to sell out to anyone! You've funded a triple-A PC game that will compete with the biggest and best. By the time the game is officially ‘done’, I'm pretty sure that the final funding will be larger than most triple-A console games outside the very biggest like GTA or COD – and our money goes much further as we don't have any corporate overhead or fancy marketing budgets.”

Roberts also stated that the possibility of a release on PS4 and Xbox One remains on the table, although conditions would need to be met before such an undertaking is greenlit.

“Star Citizen will never be on the PS3 or Xbox 360. As for the next gen consoles, PS4 and Xbox One, we have NO CURRENT PLANS, but my stance remains open,” he added.

“IF the platform holders (Sony & Microsoft) allow us to update the code and data without restrictions and odious time consuming QC procedures, IF they allow our community to openly interact with each other across platforms then I would CONSIDER supporting them.

“Who wouldn't want a bigger community of Star Citizens? If Sony or Microsoft are willing to let their platform be open, then I see no real difference between them or Valve’s Steambox, a Mac or a PC running Linux, all of which are platforms that I don’t think this community would mind supporting as they are all viewed as ‘PCs’.

“But this is a big IF as it’s asking a lot. To their credit Sony seems to be the most eager to embrace indie games and the idea of openness, and they chased us down to give us some dev kits to play with but we’ve been very clear on what it would take to get Star Citizen onto PS4.”

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